The tests are in and no fusarium was found in wheat samples from two bags bought in a Lethbridge grocery store.
Judith Nickol of Coaldale, Alta., thought she had found fusarium-damaged kernels in a bag of wheat seed she had bought for baking.
Calls to the local Save On food store and its Vancouver headquarters brought a slow response, she said, but eventually the store’s laboratory tests proved that the bagged cereal did not have any of the fungal disease. Fusarium-infested grain is banned in Alberta.
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Tests by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency were also negative.
Food inspector Chris Sudak said, “hey that’s OK. That’s what we’re here for.”
Nickol said “it was an interesting experience” as a consumer. As a farmer, she is usually on the other end of the sales equation.
In the past three months she bought three bags of the wheat seed packaged for the grocery chain by an American company, which bought the grain in Manitoba, cleaned it and shipped it back to Canada.
Nickol is not impressed with the quality of the grain in the package. She had it tested at a lab in Leduc, Alta. While that test was based on its seed crop ability rather than food quality, she said the lab showed 57 percent of the seed was abnormal or broken, 20 percent was dead and the lab staff commented that the seed was “very mouldy.”
Nickol said she now takes seriously the caution on the side of the cereal bag that says “food should be sorted and cleaned before cooking.”
While Nickol still shops at the Save On grocery for items her local store doesn’t have, she has a new appreciation for grain quality.
“On the whole I like dealing with a Canadian company rather than a multinational.”
